Keskustelujen arkisto

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Author

Topic: Mail collection box color DDA 34

(6 messages)
Matilda
Mail collection box color DDA 34 Message 1 - 2015-06-07 at 00:11:21
This is inspired by the discussion of fireplug colors on the U$ 3 thread...but I decided to be good and start another thread rather than extend the digression. On the Don Rosa "Super Snooper" cover on Donald Duck Adventures 34 (one of my all-time favorite covers, with its view of Duckburg from above), the mailbox on the street corner in the lower middle of the picture is colored red. Aren't all mailboxes in the USA colored blue? I wondered whether the colorist was from some other country, such as the UK.... I have since found the history of mail collection box color in the USA, on Wikipedia and other websites. From 1909 through WW2, mail collection boxes were painted green. (Some had been red before, but the fire fighters complained about the possible confusion with fire equipment.) After WW2, the gov't donated an immense amount of leftover olive drab paint to the Post Office, and for a decade or so the mailboxes were all olive green. Then in 1955 the Postmaster General announced a switch to red, white & blue postboxes (often, IIRC, red top, blue larger bottom section, white lettering...I can't find photos, but that is the color scheme on older toy mailboxes). The switch to the all-blue postboxes we see today came in 1971, with the organization of the US Postal Service. So...if one is Rosa-like in one's wish for correct period detail, the mail collection boxes in Duckburg should be olive drab if it's early 1950's, or blue with red tops if it's late 1950's to 1971, or all blue if it's 1971 to the present. But never all red!
Robb_K
Mail collection box color DDA 34 Message 2 - 2015-06-07 at 00:30:24
I remember The US ones being olive green, and recently mainly blue with a little white and red. Canadian boxes were red.
Ramapith
Mail collection box color DDA 34 Message 3 - 2015-06-07 at 00:54:09
Mailboxes are often red in Denmark. Egmont stories come with red mailboxes??and I think it's slowly infected Sanoma and Milan stories as well (are mailboxes red in those countries? I don't think so...)
In general, when working on US Disney comics products, I recolor and "localize" mailboxes if there's time. If not, they're a nice reminder of where stories come from.
Thomps2525
Mail collection box color DDA 34 Message 4 - 2015-06-07 at 02:44:40
I've worked for the United States Postal Service for many years. Too many, in fact. All our mailboxes are a deep blue and have decals of our eagle logo on the sides. Prior to the 1970s, mail boxes were red/white/blue. A few of those olive-green boxes still exist but they are not mailboxes. They do not have a slot for deposit of mail. They are known as "soak boxes." If a letter carrier does not have a vehicle, he will bundle the mail for each part of his route (except for the first part, which he will put in his mailbag). These bundles are called "soaks." A driver will leave those bundles in the proper boxes. The carrier will leave the post office on foot and deliver the mail for the first part of his route until he reaches a soak box. He will open it and retrieve the bundle of mail and continue delivering until he runs out of mail and reaches the next soak box. Et cetera. If his route is set up properly, he will end within walking distance of the post office.
Matilda
Mail collection box color DDA 34 Message 5 - 2015-06-07 at 17:59:30
Yup, *all* the mailboxes were olive green for a while, c. 1945-1955, but now the only olive green ones are the relay boxes, which you describe. Do you remember what the red/white/blue ones looked like? Was it indeed blue main, lower section and red top, rounded section? Was the white just lettering, or was there a white stripe/area?
Thomps2525
Mail collection box color DDA 34 Message 6 - 2015-06-07 at 19:36:37
In 1979, two years after Elvis Presley died, dick clark productions---Clark spelled it with small letters---produced a biographical movie about Presley's early years. It was titled simply Elvis. Kurt Russell played Elvis and Ronnie McDowell did the actual singing. The movie was shown on ABC Television and I was pleased to see that Clark had gotten permission from the Postal Service to repaint the curbside mailboxes so they looked the way they would have looked in the 1950s.
I could find only one 1950s mailbox picture and it doesn't even show the entire box. This appears to be one of the smaller boxes which was attached to a pole. It is a blue box with only a red top but there were also boxes which were blue on the lower half and red on the upper half. The boxes said "U S MAIL" on the sides.
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